Kato goes Undercover at a Top Secret Sex Club!!
In my last review of Kato Origins I suggested that the book may be better overall if they stick to single story per issues. In picking up this month’s issue we learned two things, 1) Dynamite doesn’t read my reviews or doesn’t listen to them if they do, and 2) I am occasionally wrong in suggesting how comic books should be written.
This issue opens with two people, a maid and a butler, having a fairly cryptic conversation, although you can kinda guess what they are talking about, probably very quickly if you have read The Boys: Herogasm. A couple pages later the butler sets the scene in a speech that, though a little bit like the famous Fight Club rules, manages to give you all the information needed without sounded too much like a forced exposition. The club, we learn, is basically a weekend resort for rich people to come and have sex with various strangers including the staff.
The guests start arriving until finally Kato arrives last with James, the homeless guy from the first five issues, posing as a Prince of Siam. James is posing as Kato’s personal doctor, a cover which may not last long because in one panel he is unable to identify what a stethoscope is. Kato explains to James why they are here, all the people at the Hellfire club are war profiteers and he is doing research for a story in The Sentinel. One of the pages I really liked in this issue is Kato explaining why they are here, the center of the page is a panel shaped like a Shuriken and two of the panels are some of Kato’s other weapons in front of a solid black background. I don’t know why I thought this page looked so good, I have seen this effect of shaping panels many times recently but this one felt very simple. Afterwards during a meet and greet and some fireworks a scream is heard and everyone rushes in to find a dead body, a classic lead in to a “to be continued.”
I really like almost everything about this book, the art looks good, the dialogue is good, and the story seems like a good idea. Before I mentioned The Boys story, which is a pretty good fit for the overall theme, rich people going away to sleep with each other and the help, but I very much doubt that the story will get into the graphic detail we have all come to expect and enjoy from a Garth Ennis story. No this story feels that it is going to be a bit more like Clue, with Kato having to determine the identity of the killer and why the victim was killed.
There are two things I didn’t really like with the story. One is the fact that Kato seems to have a sidekick in this issue which feels weird. Although I can’t really say much because I read Red Robin this week which featured Tim Drake having two people working under him, although those two were professionals at their jobs. Maybe the weird part is that his side kick is a homeless man, who I guess knows his secret identity, I don’t remember much of the first arc but I thought that Kato was in costume during it. Second is his motivation to get this information for a story in The Sentinel seems a little strange. The Sentinel always struck me as a classy paper and any news story that takes place during a secret sex club seems to be a little too trashy. Also it seems a little convenient it is war profiteer night at the club, and that most of the actual war profiteers are there because they have wives who enjoy kinky sex. So maybe that’s three things.
Anyways what did you think, did you like the issue, do you think its going to be a good arc, do you think that Kato is going to end up having kinky sex with a rich lady?
